So, we have reached the end of our twelve part series of articles on “How To Leave Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever”. If you have not read the entire series of articles up to this point, I would encourage you to start from the beginning and not only read the articles, but invest yourself by participating in this journey. Leave your own personal comfort zone! The wonder, the adventures, the experiences and the life that awaits you outside of your comfort zone are as unimaginable to you as the future that awaits a child that has just taken their first step or spoke their first word. All that you ever wanted can be yours and all that you ever dreamed of can be your life. Thinking otherwise speaks to the limiting beliefs that are found nowhere else but in your own, personal comfort zone. To doubt this only proves how much of a prisoner of the comfort zone you still are.

But, for those that have embarked on the amazing, if sometimes scary, journey of leaving your comfort zone; you have already had a small taste of the fruits of your effort. You have already seen what is possible if you believe. Yes…believe that there is little, if anything that is not within the reach of your grasp. Happiness, success, fulfillment, love, adventure, fame, fortune, or being able to own and enjoy the greatest asset one can ever acquire; your time and how you choose to spend it.

Living in the comfort zone can give the illusion of security and provide you with what can be perceived as a moderate amount of comfort. However, it will never afford you the luxury of being in control of the time we are gifted with in this reality in which we currently live. You can only enjoy that level of freedom when you are the one that your time is committed to. When you make the choice of what you wish to do with each minute, each hour, each day, and each year. To spend it not in trade for what someone wishes to pay you for it, but spend it with your loved ones, your child or children, your friends, your pet, or even your pet rock! You can spend it on your hobbies, your passions, your business, helping others, making absurd amounts of money, learning to play music, acting, getting to know yourself better through meditation, healing, or even in solitude. The point is when you don’t spend your time conforming to others expectations or obligations, you can spend it living how YOU choose to live. That is the joy of living outside the comfort zone. You are not conditioned, “educated”, indoctrinated, influenced, ordered, or forced to do anything that does not fit with your goals, your morals, your OWN beliefs, your ethics, and what is most important to you.

Not living in the comfort zone that so many are bound to gives you a clear perspective and allows you to live by a different standard. It allows you the freedom to be different and to be colorful in a world that is filled with black, white, and gray. Imagine being able to wake up on a Wednesday morning. You get up, get dressed, brush your teeth, style your hair, you get in your vehicle, and head off. A short time later you pull in to the parking lot and go inside to get started. What scenario does this bring to mind? A typical workday? Now let me skew your perspective a bit, shall we? Let’s look at this not from inside the comfort zone, but from quite a bit out of it.

Yes, it’s Wednesday morning and you wake up from a restful night’s sleep on a supremely comfortable bed. You didn’t wake up from an alarm clock, but instead, from your body clock letting you know that it was time to wake up because you have had enough rest. You get dressed, not into a suit, not into a dress, not into slacks and a nice shirt or blouse, unless that is what you want to wear today because you feel like it. Instead you slip into whatever you feel like wearing. You take your time with grooming preparing yourself for the day ensuring that you look and feel good. When you finish, you and your spouse (or significant other), and your children, get into the car and head out. Not to work, but out to the restaurant of your choice and have a nice, non-rushed, breakfast. When finished, for good measure, you decide to thumb your nose at the work-a-day world (being it’s now around 10:30AM) and take everyone to go bowling, or catch the latest movie everyone’s been talking about. Afterwards, you head back to the office (your home office that is), and sit down to do a few hours of work on your business. By mid-afternoon you take a break and read more chapters in the personal growth book you’ve been working on. Then back at it for a few more hours before going through your email and planning out your day tomorrow. Then, taking that long commute down the hallway to do whatever you feel like for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow comes and you have to do it again, but when you wake up you head to the gym for an early morning workout. Then after making it back home and getting a nice shower, you get an hour of meditation or personal time. Next is breakfast and then you write some more for your upcoming book OR work on the keynote speech you will be giving at the conference early next week. Come Monday, you fly out OR meet with your financial advisor on your upcoming investments OR head over to the Magic Kingdom to stroll down Main Street U.S.A for a day at WDW or Disneyland (for my fellow Disney fans) …that’s right it’s up to you! How’s that for living in a comfort zone. I’d be willing to bet that’s a heck of a lot bigger comfort zone than you have been living in (and it beats the heck out of morning traffic). But the secret is that isn’t “living in a comfort zone”, it is REALLY LIVING!

My point is this, living outside of the comfort zone brings only more options, not obligations. It brings more self-confidence by using your abilities and talents for your benefit. It allows for freedom to do what you are best at, not what’s best for someone else. It allows you to focus on what is most important to you! It also allows you to share the abundance you receive with causes and people that are important to you. Yes, being outside of your comfort zone can be scary at times, but so is anything worth doing. Life was never meant to be easy, it is meant to be worth it! Outside of the comfort zone is where risks & opportunities abide. It is where the happiness & sadness is. It is full of excitement & disappointment and it is full of peaks & valleys. Life is not meant to run a flat line…death is. So if you are not really living life…

One thing to remember is that getting out of the comfort zone and staying out of it requires effort and vigilance. Stay focused, stay committed, and stay consistent and you will never again be bound by the constraints of the prison that was once your comfort zone.

Thank you for joining me in this series of articles on How To Leave Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever. Living outside of the comfort zone you will find unlimited opportunities, adventure, abundance, and happiness that comes from being free to pursue that which important to you and be who you were meant to be. Use what you have learned to help create the life that you have dreamed of living. Please come back and join us for our next article on Five Ways To Get Out Of A Life Rut.

Have you have been following our series of articles on 12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever? Have been applying what you have learned towards changing your life? If so, you are over three months into making changes to what was your life and you should be seeing a significant difference. By now you should be pushing through the resistance and negative self talk that comes with making changes to what you have known and how you have lived for so long. You should be at least a little more comfortable walking through doors of opportunity that you wouldn’t open before. You should also be aware now that you can never go back to where you started when you began this journey. You’ve learned too much, you’ve grown so much, you’ve come too far, you’ve worked too hard, and your world has expanded too large to ever fit back into that tiny box that you once called your life. You can’t go back! The only way now to go is forward.This can come off sounding fine but the implementation of this can sometimes be a little bit of a trick. So if you have been making the effort to get out and stay out of your comfort zone, you have also encountered your fair share of challenges and setbacks. Surely you have remained committed. So you’re out of the woods now right? Well, not so much. Ask yourself, have you hit a massive and formidable obstacle yet? One so big that it has shaken your resolve and confidence to the core? Have you reached the point where you felt like you couldn’t go on? Have you shaken your head as you thought to yourself “There is no way I can do this…maybe it’s time to give up”? Have you been so scared to move even one step forward that you were ready to run all the way back to your old life, hide your head under the covers and quit? All the while knowing that you’ll never have the life you want? You know, there is a four letter that describes that – EASY! Let me ask you, has “easy” ever helped you get what you want out of life? Don’t get me wrong, the other four letter word – HARD, is not the sole solution either. How about working your vocabulary up to a five letter word – SMART.Now that we have changed your language skills a bit, now let’s work on your problem solving skills. Let’s say you have one insurmountable obstacle and you are standing in front of it. You have no way around it, no way under it and no way over it; do you turn around and go back the way you came? Where will that take you? To where you want to go or to where you have already been? Did you find what you were looking for where you were? If not and you still decide to go back, is that smart? No, you are in pursuit of a goal or you would have not left where you were in the first place. So, you want to go somewhere and now this HUGE obstacle is in your way. The problem remains, how to get to the other side? Now here is where your arithmetic skills come in (notice how we are now utilizing many skills to solve the problem). You know this is not going to be EASY but no matter how much brute force you apply and no matter how HARD you apply it, you are getting nowhere fast. The key is in adding SMART to HARD figuring out what is the best tool you can use to get you to the other side. In other words, learn what tool or skill will work best in this instance to get you to the other side of this problem by working smart. Then work hard while thinking and using your tools, or skill sets if you will, to get you to the other side. If you don’t know how to resolve the issue at first, LEARN HOW! In the modern world we live in we are blessed with countless volumes of information virtually at our fingertips. Vast libraries of written information, lifetimes of video, seemingly endless hours of audio, and more information uploaded and created on the web everyday. While not all this information is accurate & correct, with some research and a little discernment, there is more than enough sources to learn from. All it takes is commitment, personal discipline and time to learn whatever it is that you need to know to move forward and blast your way through whatever obstacle you are facing. Can’t is no excuse. What people mean when they say can’t is that they won’t and don’t even get me started on “try”. The only people who can’t do something is the ones that are no longer breathing. If you are reading this article, it is because you are trying to move forward in your life – not back. Time moves forward, a vehicle’s primary function is to move forward, humans walk forward, not backwards. If you want to get from where you were to where you want to be…you have to keep moving forward. Let’s be honest with ourselves, while slipping back into your comfort zone can be easier and a bit more appealing at times; but think about all you have learned, all you have done, all you have experienced, and how you feel each time you reach a new level of achievement in life since you left your comfort zone. Could you really go back? Could you go back to a life of mediocrity, boredom, lacking in adventure and excitement? Does watching life through the lens of a television appeal to you more than the adrenaline rush of living it to the full? In the 1800’s when a train tracks reached the base of a mountain that was impassable by going over it or around it what happened. They used a “tool” called dynamite and kept blasting holes in it until they had created a tunnel through to the other side. That was 117+ years ago and our “tools” have improved over time. We can do the same task with much more efficiency in time and safety. In the 1900’s and going even further back in history, people such as Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Benjamin Franklin were able to accomplish great things with their lives with the “tools” available to them in their time. How can anyone say they cannot create the life that they desire and benefit humanity in the process? With the array of amazing “tools” we have at our disposal every day. Again, we can clearly see that the problem isn’t “can’t”, it is “won’t. No one can force anyone to go in a direction that they do not want or will not allow themselves to go in. You cannot move forward if you are focused on what is behind you. Give yourself permission and the power to move forward. Have the confidence and fortitude to keep moving forward towards your goals no matter how obstinate and formidable the obstacles you face can be. Go right through them. Momentum is a powerful force! Push on, ever moving, no matter how slow or how fast, towards your destination. And what do you do when you reach it? You guessed it, keep moving forward. You cannot be stopped!

Thank you for joining me in the second to last in our series of articles on 12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever. Please join us for our next article as we wrap up this series and move forward in your journey of moving from where you are to where you wish to be!

Leaving the comfort zone is not an easy thing to do. While it does get easier with time and practice, there are a few things that can make the journey easier. A positive mindset, a dedicated work ethic, and a clear vision of what you are working to do helps. But one thing can help you keep your momentum going at a lightning pace and that is the power of thinking big.

While thinking big comes naturally to some, for others it is an acquired skill. Thinking big puts you in a different mindset when approaching the inevitable challenges that you will face when trying to achieve major tasks and accomplishing ambitious goals in your life. It helps put the things we face, that can be sometimes overwhelming, into a different perspective. Changing the paradigm of our lives is a massive undertaking. Evaluating our past, looking at our failures, analyzing all the things necessary to get us from where we are in our lives to where we want to be, and figuring out the steps to take us from here to there when we have never done anything like this before are BIG challenges. It will take BIG thinking to overcome these obstacles and make what is now a dream, our reality.

Take a moment to look back at some of the major figures in history. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill to name a few. Even in modern times we have had people like Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson. All these people, before they become known or had accomplished anything worth mentioning, were ordinary people. Some were cast into extraordinary circumstances, while others worked towards creating things that had never been achieved before. But all of them changed history, and in the process, the future for all of us. Each one of them overcame huge challenges and overwhelming odds to achieve their purpose. Do you think that they did what they did by thinking small? No, they did great things by having grandiose vision and the fortitude to overcome instead of being overcame.

BIG ideas, BIG vision, BIG accomplishments, and BIG dreams are pushed, pulled, and shoved into reality by creators that practice thinking BIG! Now, while thinking big is a necessary component in creating the life that you desire, remember that it is only in conjunction with taking action can those big thoughts be made manifest. Without action no matter how big, impressive, and well-thought-out what you have in mind may be it has no power or energy. It cannot have any effect on making your life any better, nor anyone else’s.

How many times has this happened to you? You have a great thought or idea but you do not act upon it, then sometime later someone else actually creates it and releases it and you are astonished. You think to yourself, I thought of that first, they stole my idea, and you feel cheated? But no matter how much you don’t like to hear it, there was one factor at play in them getting the credit and you being left with empty hands; they thought big AND they took action where you did not.

While there is much more to be said on thinking big and taking action on those thoughts, you should get the picture. If you have dreams, desires, and goals you want to achieve, you need to develop the skill and habit of thinking big and following up on those thoughts with action to live what are now, at this moment, the thoughts in your head.

Join me again next week as we explore the next article in the series of 12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever – Part 5 – Change Your Habits.

The very first step in this journey is figuring out just where you are at. After all it is really hard to get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you are starting from. Start a journal, it can be as simple as a binder with pockets & some loose leaf paper, or a tablet, or if you are really serious about doing this in the long-term(and have some extra funds) do some preparation and get yourself a nice leather bound journal from a book store or Amazon.com

Start by documenting everything in your life right now, both what you are currently satisfied with (this will change over time) and what you can no longer stomach. Once this is done start with one from each list. If you are satisfied with something determine how it could be even better and what steps you could take to make it better in thirty days or less. Then pick out the one thing that you are unhappy with that could be changed by taking the least action on and set a time frame for it to be changed. It may take a week or it may take just a day. Either way assign an actual date and/or time to it.

Each challenge that you face will be unique and so your solutions will have to be as well. If you cannot figure out what actions to take you eliminate these problems from your life, do what all great sleuths do; research it! Use the internet, your local library, podcasts or videos to help you find the clues in just what to do. Just do some additional research as well to determine the validity and effectiveness of the process and on the source you are getting your information from. The answer is out there waiting for you to find it. Once you have determined the most effective steps, outline your actions as stepping stones to your goal then Start with the first one NOW. That’s right, put down the journal and your pen and go take your first action at that very moment, do not procrastinate! I’ll wait.

Wow, back so soon? That didn’t take that long did it? Now you are one step closer to your goal. Congratulations! Now rinse and repeat. Do this with each step until you can eliminate this one item from your list. What then, you guessed it start with the next in line and do it all over again.

Keep working your list over and over, working on the good and the bad until everything that you thought was fine gets even better and as for the things that was eating you alive, well; those monsters no longer exist. You have slayed the dragons!

Please join us next week for our next article in this series as we continue to work through these 12 Steps To Leaving Your Comfort Zone Behind Forever together.